We told everyone we were just going on holiday.
Technically, that wasn’t a lie. But if we’re being honest with you — and that’s kind of the whole point of this blog — Bali was never just a holiday for us. It was our little secret. A honeymoon disguised as a vacation. A chance to shake off the noise of everyday life back home and remind ourselves why we fell in love in the first place. Nobody needed to know the real agenda. That was part of the magic.
So yes. Lukasz and Karolina flew to Bali with sunscreen, matching linen outfits, and a very deliberate plan to do absolutely nothing except fall in love with each other all over again.
Ubud First — Because Everyone Goes to Ubud
We started in Ubud, because of course we did. You can’t come to Bali and skip Ubud. It’s basically illegal.
We had this dreamy vision of waking up to misty jungle mornings, sipping coffee on a wooden deck overlooking terraced rice fields, maybe doing a sunrise trek somewhere spiritual and Instagram-worthy. Lukasz had even made a Pinterest board. Yes, he did that. We’re not ashamed.
What we got instead was rain.
Not a cute, romantic drizzle either. We’re talking proper, relentless, “is this a monsoon?” kind of rain that started the moment we landed and seemed personally offended by our itinerary. Day one — rain. Day two — rain. Day three, we sat on our villa terrace wearing raincoats over our linen outfits, staring at each other and laughing, because what else do you do?
Honestly? Those rainy Ubud days ended up being some of our favourite moments. We played card games. We ordered too much room service. We had long conversations that we hadn’t had time for in months. Maybe the rain was doing us a favour — forcing us to slow down before we even realised we needed to.
But we also really, really wanted sunshine. So after a few days, we made a decision.
The Move to Tabanan Changed Everything
We’d heard about Tabanan from a friend — that it was quieter, less crowded than the tourist belt, and sat right along the coast. A tidal stretch of Bali’s southwestern shoreline that most visitors skip entirely in favour of Seminyak or Canggu. That alone was reason enough to go.
The drive from Ubud took us through winding roads flanked by jungle, rice paddies, and the occasional warung selling cold coconuts. And then, as we got closer to the coast, something shifted. The sky opened up. The clouds pulled back. The sun — that glorious, warm, golden Balinese sun we had been desperately waiting for — finally showed up.
We pulled up to our villa and just stood there for a moment.
It was perched right on the edge of the beach. Not “beach view” in the way hotels use that phrase to mean you can see a sliver of blue from the corner of your bathroom window. We mean the villa was on the beach. Coconut trees swayed just outside our door. The sound of waves was so constant it became like breathing — you stop noticing it, and then when it’s quiet for a second you notice it even more. And behind us, green rice fields stretched out like something from a painting nobody could actually paint well enough.
A Villa That Felt Like It Was Made for Us
We’re not dramatic people. Okay, Karolina is a little dramatic. But standing in that villa, looking from the rice paddies behind us to the ocean in front of us, with coconut palms framing the whole scene — it felt like Bali had been saving this for us. Like this was the reward for surviving all those rainy Ubud days with our sense of humour intact.
We unpacked slowly. We sat on the beach with our feet in the sand and said very little, because sometimes you don’t need words.
The Photo Session We Didn’t Know We Needed
Here’s the thing about travel photos. You always mean to take them. You imagine these effortless, candid shots of the two of you laughing and looking golden and in love. What usually happens is one of you is squinting into the sun and the other one has their eyes half-closed, and the “candid” shot looks like a crime scene.
We decided to do it properly. We booked a holiday photo session with Putueka Photography, a local Tabanan photographer, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions of the entire trip.
From Villa to Rice Fields to the Sea
We started at the villa itself — and with a backdrop like that, half the work was already done. The photographer knew every angle, every pocket of light, every moment when the coconut trees swayed just right. Nothing felt posed. We were just moving through the spaces we’d already fallen in love with, and somehow the camera was always in the right place.
Then we moved to the rice fields. Green, quiet, impossibly beautiful. The kind of place where you walk slowly because you don’t want to disturb anything.
From there, it was back to the beach — coconut palms, barefoot in the sand, the two of us just being us. And then the sun started to drop.
We’ve seen sunsets. Plenty of them. But a Tabanan sunset, on a beach that barely anyone knows about, after a week of rain and laughter and long conversations and bad card games and finally, finally sunshine — that one hits differently.
A Secret Within the Secret
Here’s the part we haven’t told you yet.
That “secret honeymoon” cover story? It was doing more work than anyone realized. Because underneath the sunscreen and the matching linen outfits and the very deliberate plan to do nothing, Karolina was three months pregnant.
Three months. Through the rainy Ubud days. Through the card games and the too-much room service. Through the drive to Tabanan and that first breathless look at the villa on the beach. The whole time, there was a tiny third person along for the ride, quietly making our secret honeymoon into something even bigger than we’d planned.
We hadn’t told our families yet. We barely believed it ourselves. So we just… carried it with us, quietly, the way you carry the best kind of secret — grinning at each other over dinner for no obvious reason
Looking back, maybe that’s why the Tabanan sunset hit as hard as it did.
Turning the Photo Session Into Something More
Once we knew, the beach session with Putueka Photography stopped being just a honeymoon shoot in our minds. It became the earliest photographic record of the three of us — even if only two of us were visible in the frame.
If we’re honest, we’re already thinking about going back before the baby arrives, to do a proper maternity session on that same stretch of coast — the rice fields behind us, the ocean in front, Karolina’s bump finally out in the open instead of hidden under a loose linen dress. Tabanan’s quiet beaches and golden light feel like they were made for exactly that kind of photography, and we’d love for Putueka Photography to be the ones behind the camera again.
So consider this our unofficial entry into any pregnancy or maternity photography spotlight going around Bali right now — we’ve got the location scouted, the photographer we trust, and, as of a few weeks ago, a very good reason.
The secret honeymoon worked. Bali did its job. And Tabanan — quiet, coastal, completely unhurried — gave us the ending we didn’t even know we were writing toward.
If you’re planning something similar: yes, skip the crowds. Find a villa on the shore. Hire a photographer who knows the land. And let the sunset do the rest.
And maybe, just maybe, bring a little secret of your own. Bali seems to be very good at keeping them.
FAQ :
Prices vary depending on session length, number of edited photos, and locations included, but a typical holiday or honeymoon photo session in Tabanan runs shorter and more affordable than a full Bali-wide wedding package, since everything happens in one area — the villa, rice fields, and beach are usually within a short walk of each other.
Golden hour, roughly an hour before sunset, gives the softest light and the classic orange-pink sky. Most photographers, including ours, recommend starting the session about 90 minutes before sunset so there’s time to move between the villa, rice fields, and shoreline before the light fades.
Yes — Tabanan’s coastline is far less crowded, which means fewer strangers wandering into your shots and a much calmer, more private feel. It also pairs a quiet beach with nearby rice terraces, so you get two completely different backdrops without traveling far.
It’s a good idea, especially around sunset slots during peak travel months (July–August and December–January), since golden hour is a limited window and popular photographers book it up quickly.
Many local photographers, including Putueka Photography, offer maternity sessions along the same stretch of coast — the golden light and quiet beach work just as beautifully for a baby bump reveal as they do for a honeymoon shoot.
